The Chelsea and England captain John Terry says that the most important thing for England is to make sure of qualification to the World Cup next year by beating Croatia, but the players can’t stop themselves talking about getting Croatia back for knocking England out of the Euro2008 qualifiers.
He was asked if this was one of the biggest games for him as captain, with so much at stake. “I think so. I think when it comes down to it, it’ll be ideal to finish the group early.
“Possibly for the future and the games we have left, if we can finish the game tomorrow night it will give the manager the chance to maybe try a few things, try new players, and try formations or whatever he might want to do. If we can finish the job tomorrow it will be the ideal situation.”
England coach Fabio Capello, who wasn’t involved in the previous defeat, has told the players to forget the past results as this is new era with him in charge, but Terry says its not that easy for the players to forget.
“I think it’s still in the back of each player’s mind who was involved in the campaign and that night, but as the manager said it’s a new era under him and a new start for everyone since the manager has come in,” he said.
“We’ve started well and it’s important that the manager draws our attention away from that, but it’s hard for the players individually and collectively to really rule that out from the back of our minds.
“The manager calls the shots and if he wants us not to talk about that then obviously we won’t, but at the same time the players have spoken about it. It’s a chance to correct things from the bad campaign we had last time and really create things at Wembley.
“We’ve gone there (to Croatia) and put in a very good performance and got a great win over there, it would just be nice for the fans and for ourselves to finish the job at Wembley where we threw it away before.”
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